Road racing and training thread ending 3-11-17

runrincerepeat wrote:

Do you live at altitude there? What is the climate like?

We live in the capital city of Lilongwe. Altitude here ranges from 3200 to 3600ft above sea level. We are close enough to the equator, a little south, that for the past 6 months sun rise and sun set have pretty much been 5:30am/6:30pm. The weather swings between the hot and very dusty dry season and the humid, warm rainy season. When we first arrived in august of 2016 the weather was wonderful, lows in the 50s at night, highs in the 70s during the day, no humidity. But the following months got warmer peaking around November/December with highs in the 90s, still no rain. Then rainy season started and for Jan and February the weather was wet, heavy rains most days, but usually enough of a break in the weather to get in my runs. Tempts came down into the 80s but humidity climbed. Now it's beginning to rain less. The evening are wonderful, cool breeze and tempts around 60 as the sun sets. Humidity is still high, but daily high for temperature has dropped into the 70s. We've been told it will continue to cool more until the end June. It's been great for training. We have skipped winter for an entire year now.

bummer about the break-in, BirdWatcher502. Do you get to see a lot of countryside on your runs? Good job getting in 97 even with Saturday off. Wow.

thinkaboutit - it will be interesting to see what happens with the storm wrt where are they going to put all that snow? hopefully course conditions will be favorable Saturday, but at least the weather should be nice... (My bias considering things are forecast for the 90s all week here).

Runn3rgirl - haha, 28:19 sounds pretty nice to me.

Runrinserepeat - 70ish is nothing to bat an eye at. I've hit 70 twice in my life and once was when I ran the 50 :-). But yeah, I'm feeling week envy as well. Big numbers going down here these days. Also loosely following various plans and adapting for myself. Now that I'm done with the 50 miler and have a recover week in the bag I'm looking for the last 6 weeks of a half marathon tune-up (considering I haven't done any VO2 and only moderate tempo work and fast finish long runs).

pewow - nice 7s. way to get going again.

learningcurve - solid looking miles. What's MP/MP? I'd say 19 miles close to MP is a pretty good sign... Good luck in the half!

run2death - sounds like you were disappointed in the week but that's still huge and the heat has been brutal. We are in the heat-training phase of desert runners :-) Looking like 90s all week now, so it will be good timing to get ready for that long exposed CK climb.

Smoove - once again, incredible performance in the 15k. Now that you're famous I followed your strava account. You seem really dialed in right now.

slow-twitch - love seeing those low-5 mile repeats.

Hereford - nice and easy - what was your injury?

Team1 - I've got two training partners in the Malawian defense force who take me on some pretty awesome runs. We've run through some villages where the entire village just stops and stares as we run through. I imagine on some of our long runs in the more remote places they maybe see a white person once or twice per year and never one that is 6'2" wearing split shorts. You almost never see thighs in this culture, women or men. So to see a white man in short shorts running through the middle of town has the result of being starling or hilarious depending on the individual. I've had children run with me as I pass by and I've had them run away in terror crying their eyes out. But the country side is rolling fields with mountains in the distance. During dry season it's terribly ugly, but now it's like a different world, everything is green and lush.

Recovery week after the 50-miler. Felt really good. Looking back, no issues with sore tendons, toenails, and only two minor toe blisters I found after the race. A took a day off but Monday I felt like I needed to move my legs and started back with a 4-miler, did mostly easy this week but found myself on a couple trail climbs motoring away, feeling like the Energizer bunny.

S - off

M - 4

T - 6

W - 7

T - 6 (2k' trail climb)

F - off

S - 10 (2k' trail climb)

From here I'm transitioning into a 6-week plan for a fast half marathon. The race is a long downhill single-track, probably not too technical. This course really plays to my strengths (HM is a distance sweet spot for me, I'm a very strong downhill runner, and do great on single track). So I'm looking for some advice on how to tune up for this half marathon. I have been doing a lot of slow miles on the trail and road. My workouts, which have been about 1/week, have mostly been tempos or fast finish long runs.

Sorry to make this a blanket request, but I'm not 100% sure where to go from here. I'm grateful for any guidance or resource suggestions. I really want to hit this half marathon peaked and ready to win and set a course record (1:28:58 -- I am optimistic I can get it down to 1:25 depending on trail condition)

RRR - nice 3x2mi session! Race series sounds fun and might be a good way to touch on different paces

pewow - lucky 7's? I just started doing the 10sec hill sprints this week, a little bit late but I'm just really bad at squeezing in the supplemental work

r2d - echoing Smoove here, but nice 10 milers, especial Tuesday's double. Do you do the same route on these most of the time?

Smoove - congrats on the race, and whoa that long run the day afterwards shows how fit and strong you might be right now

slo-twitch - I started playing around with some 200's and 300's before snow covered the tracks, but I quite like the different things you can try to accomplish with 300's and I'd like to get more of those in when I can.

Runn3rgirl - nice week! you seem to bounce back pretty quickly from workouts

thinkaboutit - really looking forward to hearing about your race this week, and that looks like a well structured week a week out, the easy runs will pay dividends.

hereford - what kind of exercises are you doing for your hips? I've been trying to just do more stretching and massaging, but probably need to do more actual strength work

birdwatcher - you're a beast. I think the thing I take away most from your training is easy days easy actually. Just wondering, how/do you balance doing work at goal marathon pace vs. goal marathon effort (maybe in terms of HR?)

team1 - everytime I do MP runs, somewhere right around 6:20's give or take a couple seconds seems to be the most natural feeling for me. I haven't had the best track record in marathons though so I think I'm going to shoot for 6:30's and hope that's conservative and doable, I just want to use this as a stepping stone for the rest of the year.

I'm pretty good at long uphill climbs on the trails and terrible at downhills so I'm coming from a different perspective. My HS coach was a pretty accomplished ultra runner and one of the things he'd tell us is that speed on the roads translates to speed on the trails (given adequate training, of course). Sounds like you've probably already have one of the most important thing going for you since the course plays into your strengths. Sounds like it could beat you up though so maybe more mobility and strength work in the gym or body weight excercises, and balancing trail running with quality on the roads as well

Team1, I know you said the HM is non-technical, but with the strong running community down there, 1:28 is either just a supersoft CR or it's more technical than you think. I'd take a guess that it's the latter.

After OP, obviously mileage isn't gonna be a concern, I'd just focus on tempos and getting your downhill footwork dialed in.

Personally, I think the tempo work that you have been doing is probably ideal for the half.

I would probably keep that up for two or three more weeks, then maybe work in two weeks of stuff at a shorter and quicker pace (5k race pace if you think your body would be okay with it, 10k pace otherwise) just to get yourself feeling quick and confident, and then maybe do a light race modeling workout as your last workout.

learningcurve wrote:r2d - echoing Smoove here, but nice 10 milers, especial Tuesday's double. Do you do the same route on these most of the time?

Yup. It's an "out the door" route on the canal. Basically only have to deal with cars twice and both times the traffic crossings have "quick change" lights.

run2death wrote:

Team1, I know you said the HM is non-technical, but with the strong running community down there, 1:28 is either just a supersoft CR or it's more technical than you think. I'd take a guess that it's the latter.

After OP, obviously mileage isn't gonna be a concern, I'd just focus on tempos and getting your downhill footwork dialed in.

run2death, you are probably right about both. I should probably get out on the course and run some of it to ground my expectations in terms of pacing. But I do think it's soft (1:28:58 men's CR (this year's OP50 winner, curiously--don't think it was his best effort and I think I can challenge him on a downhill half marathon), 1:30:22 women's, it's been around 3 years, and hasn't had too many strong attempts). We'll see. I want to tune up and give this race my best effort and run to my potential. smoove, you think some VO2 max work starting 3 weeks out? I'm much more of a speed demon than an endurance monster so those appeal to me. Should I bring them in earlier? I am most curious about those workouts since there are so many possible permutations (i.e., what distance repeats? what pace? how much recovery?).

One workout I liked that touched on both threshold and v02 max-ish was a track workout of: 6k @ LT, 800-1000m jog recovery, then 10x400m @ 5k pace with 200m recoveries. Was pretty fun and a few ways you can do a variation of it

Honestly, your vo2max is not a limiting factor in an 1:30 race, so they are not being done to build fitness intended to impact race performance at all (which, at that point in the training cycle is essentially already all baked). That race fitness has already been reaped by way of all of the tempo work you have already done and would do the next few weeks.

The shorter intervals are really just intended to build a little confidence, to instill a feeling of being fast, and to make race pace seem relatively mild. They also prepare you a little for race day in that we all tend to get out a little hard, so by doing these, that added bit of turnover on race day won't be much of a shock to the system. For that reason, I would do something in the 1000-1200m range, at 5k pace if you can handle it without fear of injury, with a work to rest ratio of 1.25:1 or 1:1. If you decide to do them at 10k pace, you would be fine increasing the work to rest ratio some (as high as 1.5:1).

I am normally very much a hard science physiology guy, but that just goes out the window over small time horizons. Basically, after the next 3-4 weeks, just do what will make you feel fast and like a badass.

Learningcurve- that's actually something I've been trying to figure out lately. My coach gives me target paces based on current fitness, but I also like the Hanson Marathon method book which has you run your tempos at goal Marathon pace. The middle ground I'm trying to get to is running tempo/cruise Intervals at goal pace, while running continuos tempo efforts based on heart rate. I actually don't have much of a choice here. The hilly terrain makes running goal pace very difficult, so I find running by effort the more reasonable goal. When I get on the track I shoot for the goal paces and worry less about the effort/heart rate.

Team1- You are right 70 miles is a good week! Its all relative, last year if I would have thought I would hit a high of 95 and have a lot of 70-75-80 mile weeks a year back running I would have thought NO WAY. So i have to lighten up a bit for sure...

What race are you running team1? I agree with you. I would much rather crank up a quick interval workout than a tempo. Tempo's always seem so tedious to me?

Smoove- Is there a way to break a tempo run up to get the same benefit?

I am a big fan of cruise intervals. Intervals at tempo pace with 1:00 of passive rest for every 5:00 run at tempo pace. I tend to do 1 or 2 mile intervals (with 1 or 2 minutes rest, respectively). The passive rest is somewhat important. They point of tempo efforts is to adapt to lactic acid build up, so you want the lactic acid that builds up in your muscles during the intervals to remain there and be there when you start your next interval. Because lactic acid tends to clear fairly quickly once you start running slower than tempo pace, and because jogging or even light walking further helps clear the lactic acid, doing your best to stand around until your next interval (with maybe a 10 or 20m jog into the next interval) is the preferred approach in my opinion.The other advantage of cruise intervals is that you can do more work at tempo pace because of the breaks. Where a 20 minute tempo run at 5:20 pace is brutal to me, doing 6 x 1 mile at 5:20 with 1:00 rest actually feels more manageable even while providing me with more work at LT pace.*I should technically cite Jack D. here.

Runn3rGirl wrote:

Smoove- Is there a way to break a tempo run up to get the same benefit?

I'll try some of those workouts. What pace do you consider tempo? half marathon?

Daniels, and thus I, would say closer to 15k pace for you. In theory, it is about the pace at which you could race for one hour. So it is somewhere between 15k and half marathon pace, with it being closer to 15k in your case.

This is a good page to use to calculate training paces based on past workouts:

http://www.runbayou.com/jackd

It puts you at 5:54 pace or so based on your recent 5k and 8k.

I also use some subjective tests:

- go so hard that I cannot hold a conversation (or recite the pledge of allegiance), but not so hard that I couldn't get out a sentence if I was asked a question;

- go about as hard as you can without reaching the point where your breathing rhythm switches over to the faster rhythm you use during a 5k race effort.

My personal approach is to start with the objective test using the designated pace and then adjusting after 8 to 10 minutes based on the "can speak a sentence but not hold a conversation" test.

I did the 3x2mile cruise intervals w 2 mins standing rest. It's okay after you get a half mile in but that first half of the second and third repeat was tough. It felt like that lactate was just pooling in my calves

It was a confidence builder though ESP doing it on tired ace legs